THE SWORD OF THE CONSTITUTION
Clothed in his own uniform, but hardly in his right mind, Mr. Richard
Revere sat down late in the afternoon to consider the situation.
He had passed a delightfully idle day in the society of the admiral
and his granddaughter; principally, it must be confessed, and in so
far as he could contrive it, with the latter. Her cunning fingers had
mended the rents in his uniform, which had been dried and put into a
passably wearable condition. The versatility of her education and the
variety of her accomplishments were evidenced to him when he saw that
she wielded the needle as deftly as she steered the boat.
They had sat on the porch most of the time in the pleasant fall
weather, and the dozing old admiral offered but little check to the
freedom of their intercourse. In response to her insistent
questioning, this young Telemachus, cast up by the sea at her feet,
poured into the ear of this new Calypso stories of the naval battles
in which he had participated and whose honorable scars he bore. Like
Desdemona, she loved him for the dangers he had passed.
She was familiar with the history of the old navy, of which the
admiral had been one of the brightest stars. Many a tale had the old
man told her of storm and tempest, battle and triumph, shipwreck and
disaster, and his own adventures and distinguished career she knew by
heart. Although the great wave of the Civil War had ebbed and flowed
far to the south of them, she and her grandfather had prayerfully and
anxiously followed its mighty course, especially on the sea; yet it so
happened that this was the first time that either of them had been
brought in personal contact with its naval side. A returning
volunteer, a wounded soldier,--for the little town had done its
patriotic part with the rest,--had sometimes brought fresher news of
the battles than might be read in the papers, but no sailor had come
to tell them how Farragut had damned the torpedoes and steamed through
the pass until Revere told the thrilling story of the immortal fight.
The admiral waked up while this was being recounted, and he pressed
the young man with the keen questions of a veteran who knew well the
sound of battle and had fronted the enemy undismayed. Even the story
of the wound that disabled Revere must be told, in spite of his
reluctance to mention it, and Emily dropped the needle and listened
with bated breath to the simple and modest recital.
"Were you ever wounded, admiral?" questioned the young sailor, when he
had finished his story.
"Never, by God's providence," said the old man; "though I came near to
it once."
"And how was that, sir?"
"Well, sir, when the old _Constitution_ took the _Cyane_ and the
_Levant_, a shot from the _Cyane_ struck the hilt of my sword, carried
it away, and slewed me about so that I thought for a moment that I had
been hit in the side. It was a Spanish blade, and I prized it highly.
I was lucky enough to give some succor to a Spanish brig in distress
down in the West Indies on a certain occasion, years before, and His
Most Catholic Majesty of Spain was pleased to present me with a sword
for it, a beautiful Toledo blade, the finest sword I ever saw. It was
richly hilted and scabbarded, as became such a weapon, and I always
wore it in action. Of course, the hilt was ruined by the shot, and the
armorer of the _Constitution_ made a rude guard out of a piece of iron
he took from the _Levant_ after she struck, to replace the broken
hilt, and I've never cared to change it since."
"I saw it this morning in Miss Emily's room," said Revere. "I took the
liberty of examining it, and I was struck by the beauty of the blade
and the roughness of the hilt. I quite agree with you, sir. I should
not have it changed for anything."
"I call it the sword of the _Constitution_," said Emily.
"How comes it in your room, may I ask, Miss Emily?"
"Grandfather gave it to me. I am the only son of the house, you see,"
she continued with a melancholy sigh. "I would that I had been a man."
"That is a wish in which I cannot join you," said the young officer,
quickly.
"I think it's a pity," responded the girl, "that so great and gallant
a sailor as my grandfather should leave no one to bear his name."
"My dear young lady, his name is borne in our history and upon our
hearts," answered Revere, quickly. "The world will never forget '_Old
Ironsides_' and her last great fighting captain. The new navy is the
child of the old, and, in a certain sense, we all feel the obligations
of such distinguished ancestry. As for me, that I have been permitted
to meet you, sir," he said, turning to the admiral, "in this intimate
and familiar way, is one of the proudest moments of my life."
"Is it so?" said the old man, simply; "we only did our duty then, just
as you are doing it now. Dave Farragut, now, he was trained in our
school----"
"And we are trained in his school; so you see here is a connection.
Some day we may show what we have learned from him, as he showed what
he had learned from you."
"I doubt it not, young sir, I doubt it not; and while I have no sons
or grandsons to bear my name, yet Emily is a good child. No one could
wish for a better daughter."
"Of that I am quite sure," interrupted the lieutenant, spontaneously.
"And, perhaps," continued the admiral, simply, "in the hands of her
children the sword of the _Constitution_ may again be drawn in the
service of our beloved country. But where is Barry? The sun is just
setting. He should--Ah, there he is. Evening colors, Mr. Revere," said
the veteran, rising to his feet as the gun on the terrace boomed out
in salute, and standing still until the colors slowly and gracefully
floated down.
One of the most beautiful of sights is the fall of a flag, when it
comes down by your own hand and betokens no surrender. The declining
banner lingers in the evening air with sweet reluctance until it
finally drops into waiting hands with a touch like a caress.
"You see, we keep up the customs of the service as near as we can,
sir. How is the ship, Barry?" the admiral asked, as the old sailor
delivered his report, as he had done the evening before and on all the
evenings of their long sojourn on Ship House Point.
"I have a fond fancy, Mr. Revere," resumed the veteran, after the
termination of the customary conversation with the sailor, "that the
ship and I will sail into the final harbor together. Both of us are
old and worn out, laid up in ordinary, waiting for the end. But let us
go into the house. The night air grows chill for me. Emily shall sing
to us, and then I shall bid you good-night."
The girl's sweet, low voice, although unaccompanied, makes rare music
in the old room. The admiral sits with his eyes closed, a smile upon
his lips, beating the time upon the arm of his chair with his withered
fingers. The songs the girl sings are of the music of the past; the
words, those the admiral heard when he was a boy. Now it is a
rollicking sea-chorus which bubbles from her young lips, now it is a
sweet old ballad that his wife sang in the long ago time. His head
nods, and he says, softly, under his breath, half in time with the
rhythm,--
"Ay, just so. When I was a boy, so many years ago!"
Revere listens entranced, though possibly he had arrived at such a
state that he would have listened entranced if she had sung
badly,--which she did not. Her voice, though untrained, was
delightful. It had the naturalness of bird notes, the freshness of
youth, and the purity that charms the world. The airs were
half-forgotten things, lingering familiarly in his memory. He may have
heard them when he was a baby in his mother's arms, and she from her
mother, and so on down through the long line of ancient ancestry
maternal.
The sweetest songs, are they not the oldest? Have not the peasants of
Sicily been singing the music of "Home, Sweet Home," for a thousand
years?
And so the young man listens and loves, the old man listens and
dreams, and the girl sings as never before, for this time she knows
that a young heart beats in harmony with her voice. Alas for the old!
he has had his day. Compelling youth enters and displaces him. Emily
sings not merely for the past, but with thoughts reaching out into the
future. When she stops, fain to be persuaded, Revere entreats her to
continue, he begs for more. She knows not how to refuse, indeed does
not wish to do so, so she sings on and on.
The admiral sleeps, but what of that? Youth listens, and by and by, as
she strikes something that he knows, in a fresh, hearty tenor voice he
ventures to join with her. In the harmony of their voices they almost
see a prophecy of the future harmony of their lives.
Many a time has she sung to the admiral and the old sailor, but never
quite as to-night. And Captain Barry has not been there. The heavy
oaken chair, which he made himself from the timbers of the ship, which
stands by the door, and which, in its rude strength, its severe
plainness, somehow suggests the man, is empty. To the admiral she has
sung like a voice from the past, to Barry her music has been like that
of an angel in heaven, to Revere it is the voice of the woman he
loves. But to-night, although he hears the music, Captain Barry will
not come in. He stands on the porch, peering through the blinds.
Unskilled as he is in the reading of character, unaccustomed to the
observation of faces, there is no mistaking, even in the sailor's
mind, the look in the eyes of Revere.
The young man sits opposite Emily, listening to her, watching her,
drinking in the sweetness of the melody and the beauty of her face;
the light that is in his eye is the light of a love that has come, not
as the oak grows from the tiny seed, slowly developing through the
ages, and spreading and bourgeoning until it fills the landscape, but
the glory of a passion that has burst upon him with the suddenness of
a tempest, and one that promises to be as irresistible in its onset.
And Barry sees it all, divines, knows, feels, and in the light of
another love recognizes at last his own futile passion. The revelation
of hopelessness in the light of hope, of despair in the glow of
success.
Never had the Bostonian been brought in contact with a personality
quite like that of Emily. More beautiful girls, measured by the
canons, he had seen, possibly; wiser in the world's ways, better
trained, more accustomed to the usages of society, undoubtedly; but
never one so sweet, so innocent, so fresh, so unspoiled, so lovely,
and so lovable. As frank as she was beautiful, as brave as she was
innocent, as pure as she was strong. There was no use denying it; he
could not disguise it; he had loved her from the moment when, standing
on the wreck, he saw her steering the skiff in the storm, with her
fair hair blown out by the breeze and her face turned up toward him,
full of encouragement and entreaty.
And Barry knew it now.
As a young sailor, Revere had flirted and frolicked with many girls,
he had been staidly engaged to another for a long time, but not until
that day had he really loved any one. As for the girl, she had taken
him at his face value; and while it would hardly be just to say that
she entirely reciprocated his feeling, yet it was easy to see whither
her heart tended and what the end of the acquaintance would be unless
something checked the course of the growing interest she felt in the
young man.
Could Barry check it? He yearned to try. And all these things were
plain to the old sailor. He suddenly found himself dowered with an
unwonted ability to reason, to see, to read beneath the surface. 'Twas
love's enlightening touch; hopeless, uncoveting, yet jealous love,
that opened his eyes. Love blinds? Ay, but he enlightens, too.
Barry's glance through the window ranged from the dozing admiral to
the adoring young man, and paused over the face, exalted, of the young
woman. His breath came hard as he gazed, his heart rose in his throat
and tried to suffocate him. He clinched his hands, closed his teeth--a
dangerous man, there, under the moonlight. He cursed the gay young
lieutenant under his breath, as Adam might have cursed the serpent who
gave him, through the woman, of that tree of knowledge that opened his
eyes and turned his paradise into a hell.